June 22, 2025 • 63 mins
Two weeks ago, our paid subscribers got exclusive early access to one of our most compelling interviews yet.Today, it’s your turn.We’re proud to release our full conversation with Alex R. Johnson—a filmmaker whose debut novel is making serious waves. If you love gritty stories, complex characters, or the electric pulse of New York noir, this is the interview for you.🕵️♂️ Who is Alex R. Johnson?Alex made his mark in the film world with Two Step, a tense, critically acclaimed thriller that premiered at SXSW and landed a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. Since then, he’s written screenplays for major studios like Paramount and Sony, adapted legendary writer Ernest Tidyman’s Big Bucks, and earned a coveted spot on the Black List with his script Northeast Kingdom.But now, he’s taken his storytelling to a new frontier—fiction.His debut novel, Brooklyn Motto, is a literary noir soaked in the raw, changing streets of 1998 New York City. It’s got all the grit, mood, and edge of a classic detective tale, but it also brims with heart, humor, and emotional depth.“Stylish, propulsive, and deeply satisfying.” – Sam Lipsyte“Witty, brooding, and full of soul.” – Evan Handler“A love letter to detective fiction and 90s NYC.” – John Doe (X)💬 What We Talked AboutIn this interview, Alex pulls back the curtain on:* The making of Two Step and what it taught him about storytelling.* The shift from screenwriting to novel writing—and how he found his voice on the page.* Why 1998 New York was the perfect setting for Brooklyn Motto.* Creating Nico Kelly, a reluctant PI with one foot in the past and the other in chaos.* What noir means in a modern world—and why it still matters.It’s part writing masterclass, part personal journey, and part love letter to the city that shaped him.Whether you're a writer, reader, filmmaker, or fan of stories that don’t flinch, this one’s worth your time.📚 Want more like this?If you want to get early access to all our interviews, along with bonus content, behind-the-scenes updates, and more, become a paid subscriber today.Your support helps us keep building this platform, sharing these stories, and spotlighting the voices that matter. Paid subscribers are also helping us develop our new CIC business. That’s right. The Writing Community Chat Show is now a social enterprise. A non-profit business we are building to support authors and more. You can support us by becoming a paid subscriber or donate to our PayPal link here. Thanks for being part of this community. After 5 years hard work on this show, we are just getting the business started. 🎥 CJ & ChrisThe Writing Community Chat Show.WATCH THE INTERVIEW HERE!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Welcome to the Writing Community Chat Show. My name is Chris.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I'm here with my co host Chris, so makes it
easier if I go by CJ.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
How's your week being? How are you doing? Hello, Chris,
how are you doing?
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Yeah, I'm really good. It has been a productive week.
We've come up with some really good ideas that I'm
excited about. So yeah, what's not to be excited about.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Absolutely, And we've got another fantastic guest for you tonight.
So someone who's worked in screen and is now working
on in novel. So this is fantastic. So working on
has completed their novel. But yes, we've got a good
guest coming up, so stick around, ask you questions. And yeah,
we've had some big news this week, Chris. We've actually,
after five years of grafting on this show, turned it
(00:52):
into a business. We are now the Writing Community Chat
Show CIC, which is a community interest company, which means
it's like a nonprofit social enterprise where we try and
create courses and online content for a lot of writers
and authors and use that to grow the business and
then also try and give back to the community even
(01:12):
more and the more cool quirky ideas we can come
up with and the more expansive we can make the business,
the better. But it's all going back around the community
and hopefully we can just start making some brilliant things
for the community beyond the show.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
So that's great using this meek Chris.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Yeah, and that's been the motivation for my reading. So
I've got.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
What they don't teach you at Harvard Business School, that's
been one of them.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
I've got the.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Art of winning, which again is not about winning. I'm losing,
but we've gotten out at it properly. And then black
box thinking as well, So I've got my sort of
business hat on. I've got my inspiration in terms of
books and yeah, excited, excited to bring people new opportunities
and you know, really get it to where it needs
(02:03):
to be the right and community chat show and all
the things we've talked about behind the scenes that we've
not even discussed yet.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
Again, it's really exciting.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
It's taking that control and that power back into our
own hands doing what we're passionate about, making sure that
we're getting out there and supporting people in the way
that we have been doing with these shows and these interviews,
and yeah, it's exciting.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Certainly.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Is so with those books you read this week, Chris,
or the ones that you've just shown us, is there
one take away from any of those you can share
with us today that people might find interesting.
Speaker 5 (02:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
So a lot of these books always talk about your purpose, okay,
and obviously we've got quite we're quite clear on what
our purpose is in terms of helping others. Sharing your
success is one element of it. And again that's something
that we've been doing, sharing the success of authors, obviously,
like tonight's guest, as well, sharing how they've done it,
(02:58):
how they've got there, how they can inspire others. So yeah,
there's loads of really good tips and advice. Creating impressions. Obviously,
that's something that we've been doing. So I'll just read
through some of these chapters, not ther whole chapters, and obviously,
but one of them is on creating impressions. The other
one is taking the edge. So again, if you're stepping
(03:19):
out there, what you should do and getting ahead is
one of them. Timing and again, is the timing right
right now to help people and inspire people?
Speaker 4 (03:31):
Yeah, I think it is.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
And I think with all the things we've done on
this show in terms of the online platform.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
And the interviews.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
You know, if we can take that to people and
make it more personal and be sort of in a
space where people can come, they can chat to us,
the community can grow together in an organic way, then
I think it's going to be really fun and exciting
for everyone to be involved in.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Certainly is and I think the one thing that both
were both fully aware of as self published authors ourselves
how isolating it is on that journey and how much
the community has helped us that's why the show exists,
but also bringing people along and trying to get that
community to grow in their sense that they've not only
got the extra support they need, but also the other
(04:16):
people around him on the same journey, like minded people
that can bounce off each other and assist people, and
growing as well because we're all in this together. Everything's
changing all the time with publishing and AI is coming
into the game now as well, so how we deal
with that. So there's a lot of things that we're
going to be working on.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
We'll be releasing a lot.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Of those behind the scenes thoughts that me and Chris
have gone through on our sub stack soon. And yeah,
it looks like the future is snowballing, i'd say, in
terms of things that are going on. And soon we'll
have a little sponsorship announcement just finalizing that as well
from quite a well known book related company. So yeah,
(04:55):
things are happening and we're looking forward to the future
of this now business. So yeah, exciting.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
One of the things that a lot of books always
say is you become the five people that you spend
the most time with.
Speaker 4 (05:10):
And for me, like, I can't see.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
These people physically in person, but I can read about them,
get to know what they're all about, and then hope.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
To absorb some of that knowledge. And it's the same
with the shows.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
If if you've got a writer that you really admired,
the chances are we've probably already interviewed them. So again,
go back through the shows, have a little look, pick
maybe the five authors that you're mostly inspired by, and
listen to what they've said, right, Because one of the
things about the show and what makes it great is
we get to the nitty gritty elements of it and
we go, well, how do you do that?
Speaker 4 (05:43):
What have you done to do that? What advice could
you give to somebody else?
Speaker 3 (05:47):
And if you're absorbing that in and taking it on yourself.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
The chances are you're going to have some element of.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Success with your own writing as well, and that's obviously
what we've been trying to do for the past five years.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Absolutely, and with that impression of story. With that in mind,
let me introduce Tonight's guest and we're gonna get stuck
in his story. And it's a fascinating one. So let's
get into that now. So Tonight's Guest is a storyteller
thrown through, whether it's through the lens of a camera
or the pages of a gritty Noah novel. He first
made waves in the film industry with Two Step, a
(06:22):
dark and gripping thriller that premiered at SXSW and went
on to earn critical acclaim, including being named New York
Times Critics Pick and holding a perfect score in Rotten
Tomatoes Rotten Not Rotting. Since then, screenplays from major studios
like Paramount and Sony, including an adaptation of Ernest Tidyman's
Big Bucks, and his Blacklist selected script Northeast Kingdom. But
(06:46):
now he's turned his razor sharp eye to fiction, his
debut novel Brooklyn Motto Showcase above. Chris as Always is
a love letters the late nineties New York, equal parts mystery,
social commentary, and character study. It's being described it was witty, brooding, stylish,
and deeply human. So everybody, please, welcome to the show. Filmmaker, screenwriter,
(07:07):
and now novelist Alex Johnson.
Speaker 5 (07:10):
Hello Alex, Hello Jane, Chris, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Oh, you're very very welcome. Thank you so much for
joining us. How are you doing. How's your week been?
Speaker 5 (07:19):
It's been good. I've been I've been under the gun
with the deadline for the day job, for this the
film stuff, so I've been a little. Uh, I've been
a little stressed. I'm trying to submit something end of
day l a time today, so we'll see I can,
(07:40):
if I can, if I can meet that deadline that
I've self imposed.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
So we've we've interrupted your deadline.
Speaker 5 (07:47):
It's so it's good, you know, it's that you know,
any writing, you know, if you're locked in it and
you don't take you don't walk away from it, you
don't see it with clear eyes. So I'm indebted to
you for giving me the clear eyes for seeing all
the crap that I wrote. When I go back to
in an hour.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Yeah, absolutely, so how many deadlines?
Speaker 2 (08:07):
You know, most people might find difficulties with motivation to
get things done in their own time. But does a
deadline help you get to that sort of end line
or does it kind of put pressure on you in
a different kind of way.
Speaker 5 (08:22):
It's I think it helps. The problem is that I
have generally had my epiphanies about two weeks before the deadline,
you know what I mean. So I'm sort of fiddling
about for a while and then uh, and then I
realized it and I'm like, oh crap, and I need
to squeeze a few more weeks out of what's left
in time. But yeah, I mean I think they're necessary.
(08:45):
I mean William Goldman, the famous screenwriter, used to always
say how do you when people ask him, how do
you know when the script's ready? And he would say,
if you're writing it for your if you're writing it
nobody paid you to write it, it's any when it's ready.
If somebody paid you to write it, it's ready when
it's due. Yeah, you know, So it's I mean, you
(09:09):
try to put put everything into it, but but yeah,
it's a little stressful.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
So what we like to do on the show is
definitely rewind the tape a little bit, find a bit
more about you, and that kind of have that whole
journey started. So, first of all, where in the world
are you right now?
Speaker 5 (09:25):
I'm in in Brooklyn. In Brooklyn, New York. My family
is from New York originally, but we moved about a lot.
My father was an FBI agent, and so it's sort
of like being an army brat. You you move every
two to three years about so, but we always kept
(09:47):
coming back. We kind of hovered between New York and DC.
That was kind of the main areas that I that
I grew up in. And then I I thought I
wanted to like teach film theory. I loved arguing about
genre and all that stuff. I loved having, you know,
imagining myself in tweed and a pipe hing, you know, brasson.
(10:07):
But I made the mistake of working on a film
set and I just fell in love with being on
a film set and that sort of started a path
in film, mostly starting with documentary. And that's only because
my first gig, the first person to really hire me
was was Maisles Films, which is a famous documentary company
(10:28):
out of New York. They did give me shelter salesman.
They're kind of got the grandfathers of the verite movement,
and so I kind of came up at that company
and then went off and before I knew what I
was producing, but I was always writing, you know, always,
always always writing that. I always looked at that as
(10:49):
sort of a the film work as the day job,
and what I really wanted to do was was was right. So,
you know, submitted to festivals, you know, because in the
film industry, no nobody wants to be the first person
to say you're good. That's a little too risky. So
if you get your screenplay into a festival or a
(11:12):
lab or something like that, you can use that to
get a little bit of attention. So somebody starts listening
to you. They said I was good, you should pay
attention to me. So that started to happen, but I
still couldn't really break through at that point. My family
and I we moved to Austin, Texas for about ten years,
(11:32):
and when I was in Austin, I kind of stopped producing.
I was like, I have to just stop producing. I
need to do my own work. And I think within
two years, maybe three years after we got there we
were shooting two Step, So you know, Austin had that.
(11:53):
It's a much different town now, but ten years ago
still had a lot of its old school, keep Austin
weird vibes. And it also had the whole kind of
diy like you want to make a movie, let's make
a movie vibes, and that that helped tremendously, and that
launched my professional career. The film did everything I always say,
(12:16):
it did everything he was supposed to do. It critically great,
wonderfully received, everybody got good raves, and it also pretty
much bankrupt us. So but it did start my professional
career representation, and then I started working in Hollywood in
the studio world, and that was really like air brakes,
(12:38):
you know, just the tinne of difference between being independent
and then suddenly being at the studio world. And my
first big script I had sold to Paramount and Michael
Bay's company was supposed to produce it, and I remember
calling the producer and just being like, you know, so
what can I do? What can I do today to
help get this mate? You know, on the India left, well,
(13:00):
you're always thinking, what's what's happening today? Where I can
inch just a little closer to production, you know, what
can I do? And he the producer, just was shocked
and just said, like, you don't do anything, you know,
you just you stop calling me and I'll try to,
you know, get this going, but you know, you can't
do anything. And that that was a wake up call
(13:23):
to me. And then gradually I realized that you can
have a career in the studio system as a writer
and not have any movies get made. You know, they
there used to be about six studios. Now there's like
two and a half. I don't know. They're all under
the same parent company practically, but they used to make
(13:45):
about ten movies a year each. Now they make about
three to six movies a year each, and so they'll
buy hundreds of screenplays each year. And it's really you know,
in a company like Warner Brothers, my have like, well,
then we've got we're gonna have one Batman of their
six they might be, but one's gonna be a Batman,
(14:06):
one's gonna be a Chris Nolan film, one's going to
be a clinice Wood film. And then they have like
two slots left or three slots left. So it's very
it's very excuse me. It's very hard to get things made.
But what happened is you're writing these scripts, you're creating
these worlds, you're developing these characters that you fall in
love with, and then you sell it and you get
money and you you're earning a living, but it never
(14:28):
gets made and you lose the world. Yeah, no, it's
not yours anymore, at least in the United States, and
the United States we in the Union, we we we
give up our copyright in a in exchange for benefits
that the Union gives us. That was a deal we
made in the sixties. That's how we got healthcare and
things like that. So we don't have we don't own
(14:50):
copyright the studio or the producers on it. So it
just became you know, I don't want to like cry
too much. I'm not you know, I'm not digging ditches.
I am writing screenplays, I'm meeting with people, and it's
it's it's it is creative and it is satisfying on
a certain level. But we do this to actually have
people read our work or enjoy our stories, right to
(15:12):
tell stories to people. And that's when I was I
was like, well, I'm gonna I think I'm gonna write
a book. I think the next thing I'm going to
do is a book. And I I started it during
COVID and we were still in Austin, and I just
was missing New York so desperately. I didn't we didn't
(15:35):
have any family in Texas, and I was kind of
ready to leave anyways, ready to have I would love
to I wanted we were either going to move to
l A or we were going to go back to
New York. And I just I was missing New York
so much, and and I just kind of went back
to it in the book. And so I was just
in there every day in my head and also going
(16:00):
back to a time when I was, you know, young
and immortal at nineteen ninety eight. Yeah, it was, it was.
It was a real enjoyable experience, but but totally daunting.
You know, like screenwriting is fast, I mean lightning fast
compared to you know, people go at their different paces.
(16:21):
But uh, you know, writing a book, you know is
you know, is a slog and it took some getting
used to that.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Yeah, I'm going to ask.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Obviously, writing screenplays is a lot more direct and to
the point, whereas when you're writing a novel, especially when
you've people talk about your book being atmospheric, you know,
in relation to Brooklyn. So did you really take sort
of a steep learning curve when it came to description
or that sort of thing, or were you quite was
it quite a nice transition for you or was it
(16:55):
something you have to work on?
Speaker 5 (16:56):
I think that well. I always talk about this because people,
I say, have a misconception about what screenplays are like
they used to be fairly sterile, right, they used to
be bullet points. And I always cite the example of
read the first look at the first Alien screenplay and
it's like every description is just a slugline that doesn't
(17:16):
go all the way over to the side, and it's
an information information information. Then read James Cameron's Aliens screenplay.
It's one of the most gripping, beautiful, atmospheric. You can
smell it, you can you can taste it, you can
see it. You know, it's so it's so gripping. And
(17:39):
that's really where screenwriting has kind of been in the past,
like twenty years, people have been you know, you want
people to be excited and about the work and to
want to see it come to life. You definitely need
to be more economical with words, right, you know you
have to. There is a business where people will flip
(18:01):
to the last page to see how many pages it is.
And you know, I have I have written scripts for
executives where I'm fairly certain every rewrite was described to them,
you know, where they didn't read it, you know. So
so you do need to understand that. You know, there
needs to be a lot of white on the page.
(18:23):
You know, you need to make it look unintimidating. But
the real change, the real change for me that so
so so I always was fairly descriptive. I've been described
as a I've been described as a literary screenwriter, both
as a compliment and an insult. But uh, the really
(18:44):
thing was the first person. That was totally brand new
to me and absolutely intoxicating. I just loved writing in
the first person. It was it was really it was.
It was a joy. So that was that was at first,
you know, it was it was took some getting used
to and then also understanding the It's like, oh, well,
(19:09):
if I'm the first person, then we can only see
what this person sees. Yeah, and it's suddenly you realize, oh,
it has limitations, but that was really the biggest change
for me that I that that was also just a
complete joy, you know, to do.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
So Alex, how you managed to navigate that because obviously
he talks about being a producer and then going into
writing I'm guessing almost to put your career back in
your own hands. And we talked about this at the
start of the show, about putting things back into your
sort of control. So you are in a certain element
of control with the right inside of it, but then
(19:46):
how have you managed to sort of navigate the frustration
of being in control, taking back ownership of your own
sort of life in that respect, but then having to
pass it over in exchange for being able to continue
to do it, but then having that frustration when it
doesn't get made or get produced and somebody's just sitting
(20:07):
on your work and your world that you spent so
much time and effort into and then moving on to
the next one. So could you just enlighten us to
sort of how you personally navigated that experience.
Speaker 5 (20:20):
Probably poorly at first, you know, since then I've I
understand that it is it is the business, you know,
it is it is the reality of working in the business.
And you know, it was it was, it was I
love that you have this community because you know, when
I was, right when I was my screenwriting career began,
(20:42):
we were living in Austin, and and I'm I'm and
I am because my sale, my sale was kind of
a big sale at the beginning, and I went, I
got put right in the union. Like I had enough
credits to go right in the Union. So I went
in the I was in the w g A and so,
but there really weren't any other right people in the
Writers' Guild in Austin. There were a few, but now many,
and so I never really felt part of a community.
(21:04):
And then when I came to New York. When I
came back to New York about three years ago, we
moved back, and I, you know, I called up my
my my union rep in the West Coast because we were,
you know, we're on the verge of a strike, and
I wanted to be able to doce things in New
York even though I was a West Coast Guild member.
(21:26):
And he was like, well, just join the join the
new join the East Coast Guild, you know, like, just
just do it. So I so I joined the East
Coast Guild. I transferred to East Coast Guild, and suddenly
I was, you know, in a community of writers, which
I had never really experienced. And the strike happened shortly thereafter,
and so I'm walking the picket lines and you know,
(21:46):
we're all we're all chatting for the first time in
a long time, and you just realize how consistent the
story is of the frustrations, and you know, and it's
just it's it. You know, you're still frustrated, but you're
part of a community of frustrations. So it makes it
a little less, a little, a little less, a little
(22:07):
you know, it hurts a little less maybe, So that
certainly helped me. And that was also and also at
the time, I mean at the time, I was with
a pretty big book agent in New York and I mean,
I'm not going to name the person. And it was
a very frustrating experience. I had heard just how big
(22:33):
this person was and what he could do, and then
a I could never get him on the phone, which
has never been my experience with my film agents. They've
always been you know, I mean, it'll call me back
if they can't take my call, you know, or they'll
text me or something. But this guy I couldn't even
connect with. And it got very frustrating. And you know,
(22:56):
we were sending it out and I didn't understand why,
how he was the process of how he was sending
it out, and you know, he would send it to
like three three companies and then he said he would
give them four months and then he would send it
to some more and it just and it was just like,
you know, I'm going to be dead, you know, by
the time this thing ever gets published. And and I
(23:16):
was walking on the you know, and I was walking
with with a lot of other writers and then started
talking to a few that self published, and and I
was like, you know, I just I hate And it
was just that feeling again of being out of control,
like just let this person do their job. And I
was like, I don't know if they like their job,
or if they know their job, or you know, they're
(23:38):
they're successful, but I don't know if it's because of
how well they do their job. I think they're just
you know, it's just the world. So I took the
book back after about a year and a half and
started just doing you know, a lot of research. I personally,
I did send it out to a bunch of indie
(24:00):
super indie small presses, which I had asked my agent
to do at the time, and he said he wouldn't
because he doesn't make any money that way. So that's
that was right about when we kind of parted ways.
So I sent it to a bunch of presses that
that were okay with no having no representation but or no,
(24:20):
you know, they didn't. I didn't have someone else sending
it for me, you know, And I was offered a
couple of publishing deals that just my experience in the
independent film world, it sounded a whole lot of you know,
where people would offer me distribution deals and they'd say like, oh,
and then you know, and then Mike, here's our marketing team.
(24:42):
And I was like, I thought Mike answered the phones. Well,
Mike answers the phone, then he does marketing. And I
was like, do you mean like Facebook or do you
mean marketing? And he's like, wow, Facebook and Twitter, and
you know, it's like, so, but what about like marketing?
You know? And then well if you want some mart
and they if you want that, you know, you're welcome
(25:03):
to go out and hire someone to do it. And
it just became clear that it was going to be
that similar situation and I would still end up probably
paying somebody to do some publicity, and I just thought, well,
why not just do this, uh where I'm in control
of every process, or at least I'm I'm, I'm, i'm
(25:27):
you know, I'm supervising people that I trust, between the
copy or the incredible artists that did our cover and
the graphic on the inside, you know, and just and
and and everyone I spoke to on the guild on
the on the lines that self published was like, just
don't rush it. You know, your instinct once you've waited
(25:49):
for two years because of your agent or whatever, and
now you're like, I'm going to self publish, and people
rush it, and they shouldn't run. You know, You've got
to treat it. Maybe not a year out, but give
it six months, you know something, so you can plan
and try to do some publicity and and all that stuff.
So so that's that, that's what I decided to do.
(26:10):
And you know, I'm glad. It's certainly it's certainly an uphill,
it's certainly, but I'm glad I did it that way,
and the book exists as it exists, and and you know,
and I was a part of every piece of it,
so you know, I'm proud of it. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
So what advice went you give to people?
Speaker 3 (26:34):
And Alex in terms of like you talked about getting
that good attention and when you went off and obviously
produced your own film and it got so much critical
of praise and.
Speaker 4 (26:45):
You know, everyone was praising it in the right way.
Viewers loved it and and critics loved it as well.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
How much of a temptation is it then for you
to be creating that good attention for yourself? And how
do you actually do them?
Speaker 5 (27:03):
You know, I think I think unfortunately you realize how
you should have done it after long after you should
have done it. You know. Generally, you know, my main
advice with anyone I do a lot of mentoring at
the Guild with with you know, I'm not going to
say younger screenwriters, new screenwriters, because a lot of people
join the Guild you know in their forties and fifties
and sixties. Is always have, at least in the film aspect.
(27:28):
You always have to have more than one project, you know.
You just it is so hard to get anything made,
It's so hard to sell anything, and it's so hard
to get anything made. You need to have multiple things
that you're trying to do at the same time. And
then when something goes, you go with it. You know,
you you ride, you ride the current with it because
there's so much working against it and working against being
(27:53):
a success in film that you you already have, you know,
the kind of like level of difficulties already so high
if you have any momentum to go with it, you know.
With the book, uh, I probably my my lesson to
(28:13):
myself is probably even though I gave myself six months
out when I decided to start this process, I probably
would have I probably should have done a year, you know,
to do it, to really do it properly. It's so
hard though, it's so hard. You're so desperate for it
to be out, and you know, and you think six
months and I'm like, I don't know if I can
survive six months, like with it not out yet. I've
(28:36):
waited years, you know, And but it's it's it's certainly
worth it to take your time with it and just
you know, take a deep breath and and and understand
that you know, it's it's it's for the it's good,
good but then I will say I've I have a
lot of friends. When I started in New York, I
(28:58):
was doing some music stuff as well, and I have
a lot of friends that are still in the music business.
And I feel like the only ones that are still
in the music business are doing publicity that are my age.
And I was speaking to one recently and he does
pr for Billy Bragg here in the States, and he
said he tells all independent artists nowadays, you can't think
(29:21):
of it as a release day or week or month.
It's a release year. You know, just there's it's it's
a hustle and it's so hard to get attention, and
you just got to try and just keep sending out
those query letters, you know, trying to get on the podcasts,
(29:41):
trying to get on trying to be interviewed, trying to
get the book out there, like give it a year,
like don't don't don't don't crack if when it comes out,
it doesn't you know, sell a thousand to ten thousand
copies on the first day or something like that. You know,
like just know that it takes time, especially when you're
working from an indi pendent level. You just have so
(30:02):
much against you.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
You know.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Yeah, there's been a few occasions where we've had people
on the show that have been really sort of informative,
and the way they approach their book sales is like
stripping it right down and building it as a business
and really taking that professional business approach and working on
it like your like it's your day job. And I
think a lot of indie authors perhaps don't do that.
(30:26):
I'm one myself, you know, I'm obviously busy doing other things,
but there's a lot of people that don't actually think
of it in that sense and do exactly what you
said is rush it out there and then expect things
to happen. But it's that whole after the writing process
where the real hard work begins, unfortunately for a lot
of people, and that marketing is a crucial aspect. So
I think a lot of people really need to take
(30:47):
that into account and do what you said, really look
at it more ahead of time and more after after
the release as well.
Speaker 5 (30:55):
Yeah, and also, I mean people have you know, a
lot more ability to get some exposure that they think.
I mean, you know, the whole blurb process is you know,
so absolutely devastatingly humiliating, but at the same time, you
could cold email people and if you were fans of
(31:19):
theirs and you can't know this is this is twenty
twenty five. You can figure out people's email addresses. It
might cost you nine bucks a month, but you can
from various websites, and you know, you can call it
email or you can send emails or just and you
can put you know, you put some personal connection to
their work and how they've mattered, and that it would
(31:40):
mean so much if they could, you know, read your work.
I had a few people that responded that way to
my blurbs. But then also you generally don't realize how
connected you are. Maybe it's you know, Kevin Bacon's sort
of situation where it's layers of connection, you know, but
you start asking around. I started sending emails out just
to people and say, I'm about to start the blurb
process I need. I'm looking for blankety blank or authors
(32:05):
or even anyone I was I was trying to get
like nineties icons even just because of the book was
set in the nineties. And yeah, and and know that
you the amount of requests you make should be high
because you're going to get a two to eight percent
success you know, maybe a ten percent response rate and
(32:26):
then a percentage of that are actually going to finish
the book and get the blurb done? So but also
but that that that process I would have started a
lot earlier. I did not start that process early enough.
But yeah, okay, Well.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
What's the plan for this book then?
Speaker 3 (32:47):
In terms of like you talked about, like, you know,
approaching it as a business and approaching.
Speaker 4 (32:52):
People before the blurb and before it's out and stuff.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Now that it is, are you going to follow the
same sort of technique and you know, maybe just mail
it off to people and go, you know, I've written
this and see what you think and stuff like that.
And there's your plan partly to do that and then
to keep writing. And have you got like another novel
in the work? So have you got like most green blazes?
Obviously you have because you talked about the deadline today.
(33:16):
But is that your plan moving forward then, to like
nurture this book but also keep working on others and
keep pushing them in the same sort of way.
Speaker 5 (33:26):
Yeah. I mean, I think my agents, my film agents
want me to just try to to crack out a
pilot based on the book or something like that that
they can start trying to sell, but I think the
book needs to get a moderate amount of attention first.
But but yeah, I'm still sending it out, you know,
when friends. I'm getting a lot of emails and texts
(33:47):
from people I haven't spoken to in a long time
who will be like, oh my god, head the book.
I loved it so much, you know, blah blah blah.
And I'll say like, you know, well, please spread the word.
You know, publicity is difficult. Magazines don't exist anymore. You know,
it's hard to try to get you know, some exposure.
And invariably they say, oh, yes, I've been lending it
out to friends, you know, on to be like, well,
(34:12):
first of all, make them buy it. Yeah, that's fine,
But that's the process, right. It needs to get out there.
It needs to kind of like you know, spiderweb out
there and and and it'll and then it hits. It'll
randomly hit someone. I was tagged in a LinkedIn post
of someone I do not know who has fifty thousand followers,
(34:35):
and he posted the book with like a six hundred
word you know, critique or love, you know, how much
he loved it because he was in New York in
the nineties and all this stuff, and I was like,
I don't know how that happened, but it was one
of those spider webs, probably one of those free those
those lent out copies. But but yeah, so I'm doing that,
(34:58):
you know, continuing with uh press, trying to get people
actors I've worked with, to take pictures of themselves on
the Euphoria set reading it. I'm looking at you, James
Landry Abert, uh, you know, and uh, let's see see
what's what. But you know, I it's just so you know,
(35:22):
I've done writing so so long in film and not
really having these this thing exists, you know, exists beyond
like two step or projects that haven't you know, materialized yet.
It is. I don't want to overstate how rewarding it
is to have a book, but it's it's just been
tremendous to just have it, you know, just just just
to just to know it exists on paper that will
(35:49):
you know, not last thirty five years probably, but still
but you know, it's it's, it's it's and it's such
a personal book too, so that I don't know, it's
it's been a it's been a rewarding experience. I still
obsess over sales.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
But with with it, first of all being a personal
book and the fact it related back to your youth
in the location that you're you know so well, and
having the process where your screenplay is often went out
to certain people and they kind of put it maybe
on a shelf in a you know kind of way,
and having this self published book when you released that,
(36:27):
was there a big difference in kind of the feeling
you had or the nerves perhaps releasing the book compaied
to screenplay because you knew people were going to read
it and give your feedback quite instantly, compared to the
screenplay which sort of feedback.
Speaker 5 (36:40):
Yeah. The I mean, I think, you know, with any writer,
once you hit send, you're just filled with dread. Yeah
about even just about the grammar and the email. But
uh yeah, I mean it did. And when the blurbs
would come in, you know, I started to like pause
(37:02):
my imposter syndrome for like five minutes, and then I would,
you know, and then and then I would have it again,
and then another great blurb will come in. So I think,
you know, once it got out there and the every
everyone's been pretty positive about it. I uh, I'm not
(37:22):
as I'm not as nervous about it. If you don't
like it, you don't like it, you know, it's I
don't I don't know what to do about that. But
I mean, actually, you know, the screenwriting stuff people write,
people read it faster than they do the books. You
know that they at least in the when you're a professional,
like when you're doing something for hire or for you know,
it's kind of terrifying. They'll they'll send you a yes
(37:46):
or a no pretty quickly. But but the but but
it's been it's been positive, you know. I I think
I skipped over another part of your question about business,
just in terms of what I'm doing in terms of writing.
Just to go back again, I forgot to say, yeah,
I'm I'm writing. I have another book. I have another
(38:06):
I have you know, I have this character I'd like
to continue, you know. I mean, part of this is
satisfying my urge to have a my own detective character,
you know, which I think everybody wants to have their Colombo,
you know, you know, uh so, so I do have.
I do have a series of the next book is
(38:27):
pretty laid out. I haven't started writing it yet, but
I have my spillage notes of what I want to do.
So so I'm gonna I'm gonna get started on that
pretty soon. I need to. I need to get a
sale with my day job. I need to I need
to get I need to make a little money for
my agents and myself, and then I'll have the time
to to to put back into the into the h
(38:50):
into the book. But yeah, I do want to continue
with that, brilliant.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Okay, So we've been chatting for a good forty minutes
about about your journey so far, and we have heard
about the book yet. So yeah, so could you tell
us all everybody what the book is all about and
then we'll get some questions based on that.
Speaker 5 (39:11):
So and start off in general terms, it's a it's
a it's a take on first person noir kind of that, uh,
you know, detective fiction. But it's also about being at
that point in your life where, you know, late twenties
where you kind of have to start making decisions and
(39:32):
start being more active and less passive and and stop
letting life happen to you. But you have to go
out and and and and and and engage with life.
But so, the protagonist is Nico Kelly, who is a
private investigator, but he sort of doesn't see himself as that.
He takes pictures for a for the city. Whenever anybody,
(39:55):
a city employee, has an insurance claim, he kind of
just follows them for a little bit and takes some
pictures in case they can prove that the insurance claim
was false. And you know, he thinks he's kind of
a snitch, and he doesn't really like his job, and
he's kind of feeling a little lost, and he ends
up following a police officer one day and he is
(40:19):
videotaping when two other undercover police officers show up at
the police officer's house and kill him, and he can see,
you know, through a slit in the window, he can
see just the muzzle flashes, but he doesn't he doesn't
see the definitive information. But he then takes it to
his boss, who he thinks is going to help him out,
(40:41):
but his boss ends up having other ideas of possibly
blackmailing the cops to get some money out of them,
and then everything just sort of starts unraveling and bodies
start piling up. But in the interim, he's also twenty
eight years old and hooking up and you know, you know,
(41:02):
going to pubs and playing pinball and and and and
judging those around him, which is the joy of first person.
But it's also an exploration in some ways of my
own kind of genetic makeup. I'm half Ecuadorian and half
Irish American, and my in my writing, I've always kind
(41:26):
of avoided that. For some reason, I don't know, I
felt like, oh, you can't write about your I can't
just make somebody me that's I don't know why I'd
laid that on myself, like I thought it was like,
but I didn't for years. And then I heard an
interview with Gary Steinart where the interviewer was basically like,
I can't help but notice your protagonist in your new
book is a Russian writer who lives in New York.
(41:47):
And he kind of pushed back really aggressively, and it
was just like, why the hell can I just make
it's my book? It's my life. It's that's what I
want to write about. And you know, and as I
get older and as people parents and grandparents aren't around
anymore to ask questions about who I am, you know,
(42:09):
I kind of feel like the book was an exploration
of me asking those questions in some ways, so simply yeah,
so something yeah, with a bit more murder. Yeah, you
gotta make it fun, you know. It's it's uh, it's
you know, there's a growing up you're you're being Ecuadorian
and being Irish American. You're generally too white for the
(42:31):
Ecuadorian side and you're too brown for the Irish American side,
but then nobody thinks you're Ecuadorian. So you also witness
incredible racism. You know, the things people have said to
me thinking I was, you know, just a white kid,
and I will say like, hey, I'm actually Latin American.
(42:53):
I find that very offensive and they're just like, well
you are, but you're not really. You don't look at
and you're not you don't act it. So anyways, I
kind of wanted to investigate that in some ways as well.
And all set in nineteen ninety eight Beyonny Time, New York.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
So it was nineteen ninety eight always the choice, because
it was something you could sort of it was familiar
in your mind, or was there the other different sort
of timescale you attempted with.
Speaker 5 (43:21):
It was I wanted it to be Giuliani Eira definitely,
and I didn't want to get too close to nine
to eleven. And I, uh, it's spread on the edge
of what I can still remember basically, But it is
like for me being at the time twenty seven twenty eight,
(43:41):
it is that, you know, it is that moment in
time I wanted the protagonist to be. So I just
felt like, what just said it? Then? And then I
found I have this little you know, an old pape,
you know, an old book diary. It wasn't a diary,
but it was. It was a date book, right, And
because I used to do freelance film foruction and i'd
have to fill on a hole, I'd have to put
(44:02):
the dates down as pre you know, I coal, you know,
and BlackBerry and all that stuff. And so I found
my book from nineteen ninety eight, and I still added
the bottom of the box, and I pulled it out
and flipped through and reading about, you know, seeing like
dates and movies and friends' names and band names and
(44:24):
you know, and and meet at this pub that doesn't
exist anymore, and it just kind of all sent me
back a little bit. And then just to help flesh
it out, I got, you know, I picked a date,
and I picked a literal week. I wanted it to happen,
and then I ordered The Village Voice from that week.
And the Village Voice was the big independent weekly in
(44:45):
New York City at the time, so it was where
you'd have all the band listings and art listings and
films and everything. And when you lived, you know, that
was like your Bible. You always had one on you
because you always needed to know what was happening. So
I sort of flipped through those, just the ads, and
it just kind of sent it all back in a
in a clear, clear way.
Speaker 4 (45:06):
Amazing. Yeah, I was just going to say, having like the.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Desire to have a series of detection detective novels, have
you got a time frame in mind for those as well?
Is it going to be something that you're going to
carry on for quite a few books? Like obviously we
know a lot of people who've had quite a lot
of success with that type of format, having a detective
and following them through a period of history. Is that
something that's crossed your mind and that you've thought about
(45:35):
doing in the future.
Speaker 5 (45:37):
Yeah, No, that's that's that's the plan. So the next
novel will be will still be twentieth century, that'll be
ninety nine, and then I don't want to deal with them.
I want there's this fascinating period in New York. I
was in New York for nine to eleven, and there
(45:58):
was this really strange I mean, the whole period was
upsetting and strange, but there was a really weird period
where when you started getting used to no planes flying
over except jets, you know, and military people with automatic
(46:19):
weapons walking up and down the Brooklyn Bridge, and it
was just like quiet, and it was a very strange
time where the whole city seemed to be in coming
out of a coma, you know in some ways, and
not sure what to do or you know. It was
a very it was a very interesting time. So I
(46:39):
don't want to deal with the immediate aftermath of nine
to eleven, but that period there I find very fascinating.
So that's where I would do the third one. It
would be about it would be two thousand, mid two
thousand and one, probably maybe a little after that, but yeah,
and then after that, I'm not sure. Maybe the antagonist
(47:00):
will just mirror my life and go down to Texas
at some point. Who knows.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
Yeah, not so.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
Anya said that the book sounds really interesting. She's going
to get it and was in college in nineteen ninety
eight and remembers that year.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
Well, so, I said, was that in New York?
Speaker 2 (47:17):
She said, no, Miami, But I lived in Connecticut until
ninety seven and took the train to New York with
friends in ninety five ninety seven.
Speaker 5 (47:23):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
Yeah, So obviously that sort of local knowledge of history
of being in that area. Will people really resonate with
the kind of detail of the city in your book,
because someone described it as very as in New York
being a character itself in your novel.
Speaker 5 (47:40):
Yeah, I mean, I think it was important to get that,
and that's probably why I couldn't go much beyond earlier
than ninety eight because of my my aging brain. But
but yeah, it's definitely I wanted you to feel it.
And and that's you know, without tooting my own home.
And that's a lot of people have come up to
(48:02):
me and just been like, how the hell did you
remember that? But I think sometimes people do that where
they're not when they're not writers, you know, and they
don't realize that like we're basically banking stuff for further
use for our entire lives, you know, or just we're
we're in the moment, but we're also thinking how we
can use this moment maybe later at home in front
(48:24):
of our computer. So I've always if things have stuck
with me that I I mean, I can there are
certain images in the book I can remember when I thought, oh,
I should use this like and I'm talking about things
I remember that I thought in ninety nine. I mean,
I was much better about note notebooks back then. I
used to walk through the notebook and you know, I
(48:45):
pretend that I'm doing it on my phone now, but
it's not the same as when I used to walk
around with a notebook and just scribble things down constantly. Yeah.
What's the main.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
Difference on that you've noticed between script writing and writing
a novel.
Speaker 4 (48:58):
What's the sort of day today been like comparing the two.
Speaker 5 (49:04):
You know, I like to I like to get my
head in if I whenever I'm approaching in a screenplay situation,
I like to read everything if I if you know,
I'm mentioning forward in a script, I like to start
my day from page one, reading and going into it
and then try to write the momentum. So I'm consistently
(49:27):
and uh in tone and and going with the flow.
But obviously with the book, I couldnt start the book
from the beginning. Every day it was you know, it
was like is that is that kind of like inching
going back a little bit and then so kind of
figuring that rhythm out where I felt like I was,
(49:48):
you know, I was in the voice of the character consistently,
so I can move forward. But also, just like I've
said up before, but it's it's when you're you know, right,
scripts is a much faster process, and you know, you
really do get intimidated by that word count. You know,
it's just like and then before you know, but then
(50:09):
but then it's like, you know, I would always set
a goal for myself that was pretty low, you know,
just so I could reach it and just be like, Okay,
I did it. But I think part of my never
having done it before, my big fear was not finishing it,
not not having the legs to finish it. And you know,
(50:30):
maybe I'm going to make a go. I've never written
run a marathon, and I never will. I had. You know,
one of the production companies I used to produce at
there was a you know, just the accountant there ran
marathons like eighty year, like just travel the country and
ran marathon, and I asked her how she trains, and
(50:53):
she was like, I don't. I don't. I don't need
to train, you know, Like I mean, She's like, I'll
run like a couple of miles else a day. But
she's like, but I know I know the marathon now,
like I know how to get through it. I know
how I'm gonna feel at this stage. At this stage,
I know if I push myself too hard here, I'm
not going to make it to hear and I and
(51:14):
I feel like writing the book is sort of like that.
When I approach the next book, I'm not going to
be as filled with terror at the word count. You know,
I'm gonna I kind of know. I know the feeling,
you know, the muscle memory of it will help. You know.
I'm not saying it's going to be a thousand times easier,
but I think it's kind of like that, like you're
(51:34):
kind of now that I did it, I know I
can do it and I will do it again, you know, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (51:42):
All right, Chris, we need to start on our staple
questions and then guys that are watching, if you've got
questions for Alex, now was the time to pop him
in the chat and we'll ask them. But first of all, Chris,
do you want to start us off? And we'll get
through it.
Speaker 4 (51:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (51:56):
So one of our staple questions that we have is
if you could take any character from fiction and made
that character your own.
Speaker 5 (52:03):
Which character, and why, gosh it might be Uh, it
might have to be Colombo just because much I mean,
it's not really fiction, I could. I mean, I know
I've read novelizations.
Speaker 6 (52:21):
I'm that much of a of a of a a
Colombo addict. But uh, I'll stick to I'll stick to Uh,
I'll stick to fiction.
Speaker 5 (52:35):
Yeah. I I love Elmer Leonard and I feel like
Gold Coast has had such an influence on all my work.
I mean, I can argue that a good chunk of
Elmore Leonards it's sort of in the same vibe as
Gold Coast, but I forget the protagonist name in that.
(52:57):
But but it's just had it just has ripple effects
in everything. I mean, the thing I wrote today, definitely
the thing I'm working on right now. You know that
involves involves the Dixie Mafia, and it feels Elmer Leonard
influenced throughout it. That would probably be that nice.
Speaker 1 (53:21):
A lot.
Speaker 4 (53:21):
Sorry, A lot of people.
Speaker 3 (53:24):
Talk about him as being such an inspirational figure in
both screenwriting and novels.
Speaker 4 (53:31):
So like, why do you think that is?
Speaker 3 (53:32):
From your like professional viewpoint now having been through that process?
Speaker 4 (53:37):
What makes alm More Lenard so special in that regard?
Speaker 5 (53:40):
You know? I again, like something that my agents will
say about uh, any agent will say about their client
is they'll they'll talk about a script having a real,
real Alex R. Johnson vibes, you know, and it's I
think it's a stretch for me. But when you're when
you pick up an Elmore Leonard book and you read
(54:02):
the first page and you hold it in your hands,
you're in his world, and you know, you talk about
a marvel like multi verse, like you just believe that
this world exists, of all his characters, you know, you
know through time. It's just such a clear voice. It's
so clean, And I mean that in terms of like
(54:24):
it's it. He doesn't try to be fancy, but at
the same time, there'll be a line of description that
will just drop you. You know. I feel the same
way about Richard Price. You know, Richard Price is his description.
His description will be limited. He won't be heavily descriptive
(54:44):
all the time. But then he'll just you know, he'll
say something and you just put the book down and
you're just like wow, you know how you know that
just blows you away.
Speaker 2 (54:54):
So yeah, okay, if you could take the ending of anything,
whether that be a TV show, a novel, or a film,
and changed the end into something, what ending would you
change your way?
Speaker 5 (55:08):
Oh? Boy? Maybe uh, maybe the ending of saying elsewhere.
I don't know if that you're too young for that.
The TV show at the Hospital, you know, I think
that they ended by a little boy staring into a
globe and the hospital was inside the globe, and they
they were alluding to the fact that the entire show
(55:30):
is the entire like eight eight seasons of the show
inside the globe and the boy's imagination. And I found it,
you know, I think most people found it a little insulting.
Speaker 1 (55:45):
Oh that's not brilliant.
Speaker 3 (55:48):
The next question you have is if it's a bit
of a morbid one, but you're on your death bed,
you're looking back at your writing career, what would you
be happy with?
Speaker 4 (55:56):
What is success to you?
Speaker 5 (55:58):
You know, I mean, i'd have to say, at this
point the book you know. I mean the book is uh,
you know, the book's about there's a dead father in
the book that's very present, not as a ghost or
anything but that, but it's very present. And so it's
a father and something. I have a son. I obviously
(56:20):
have a father. I feel like, you know, when my
son reads the book, I mean he's he's old enough
to read it, but he has not read it. When
he reads the book, he'll know me in ways that
he'll never uh that that that that you know, he
would never get just talking to me. So it's not
(56:43):
exactly it's not my life, but it's there. But I'm
in it, you know, I mean my spirit, I think,
and uh yeah, I think that's why.
Speaker 1 (56:54):
Yeah. Nice answer.
Speaker 2 (56:55):
Okay, I've got a question that's not a stable question,
but it's what I want to ask. You mentioned screenplays earlier,
Alien and Aliens, two of my favorite films in the
past or currently still.
Speaker 1 (57:06):
There's a new series coming out Alien Earth.
Speaker 5 (57:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (57:10):
I'm very skeptical of this. It looks great fun the
trailer so far. However, there's so much they could do
with Aliens on Earth. What they've shown so far is
very sort of classically Alien style.
Speaker 1 (57:25):
What are your hopes as someone who's in the.
Speaker 2 (57:27):
Screenwriting world for something such a big scale to come
out so far away from the original.
Speaker 5 (57:35):
You know, I can only trust in Noah Hawley, who's
the who's who'd created that show and who did the
Fargo adaptation? And gosh, what else has he done? I forget?
But but he's so good and he's such a great writer.
He's one of the screenwriters I recommend people read one
(57:57):
of the you know, TV screenwriters because I think he's
he's so talented. So I'm just going to trust and
I'm just gonna trust and Noah Holly. I mean, it's
any of these things. You know, you're you're always supposed to.
It's funny because when you when you're adapting things or
when you're presented with something that existed in another environment
(58:20):
or medium, they Hollywood claims to really want you to
put your take on it. They're like, you want the
Noah Holly vibe, we want the Alex R. Johnson whatever,
you know, but that it might not be what the audience.
But so we'll see. But he's so talented, you know,
I think it'll I'm hoping it'll be good.
Speaker 2 (58:42):
Yeah, Well, I saw a very very small trailer today
and it looks so far on the money.
Speaker 1 (58:47):
So let's have our fingers brusty. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (58:50):
Question for manyah, thank you very much. If you can
go on an all expensive paid writer's retreat for your
next creative work, where would it be? In other words,
what place can inspire you like no other?
Speaker 5 (59:01):
You know, when I was in Texas about a few
years in, I was ready to leave, and I just
I have wonderful friends, I love Texas, I love Austin,
but I just I'm a New Yorker and I just
never quite vied with it. About the third year, we
went to Marfa, which is West Texas, which basically imagine
(59:23):
no country for old men. It's all shot there in
that area. It's a type of place, you know, you
could walk out with a bottle of wine, lay down
in the middle of the road in the middle of
the night and just lay on your back and look
at stars, and you know no one's going to come
by except maybe a while hog or two, and it's just,
(59:45):
you know, it's the kind of place where you start
using words like magical, unronically. You know, you drop all
cynicism about what an environment can do to you. And
I think that it's that kind of uh it's like
a blank slate without being entirely blank, So you're able
(01:00:07):
to focus, but you're still able to ah, feel like
you're part of the world, but a small part, you know.
I like places that make me feel a little small
that that that just make me kind of be in
awe at the size and scope of our existence. So
(01:00:29):
I do I uh, there's a lovely place there that
that I couldn't afford to stay out long enough to
write a book, but I'd love to.
Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
Yeah, that sounds good, brilliant.
Speaker 2 (01:00:40):
Okay, So we have gone over our hour and I'm
very very conscious that you've got a deadline very much
looming over your head right now. So before we wrap
this up, where can people find out more information about yourself?
Where can they go and by Brooklyn motto and stalk
you on social media?
Speaker 5 (01:00:57):
Sure? So, uh uh, if you're in the States, we
have bookshop, I would recommend going to bookshop dot org.
That's uh that that's the online marketplace where you can
actually still support your local bookstore where they get a
cut of the sale. You just list them and they
and they get it. So or just go to your
bookstore and order it if you don't have it. If
(01:01:19):
you need to order it from Amazon, you may they no,
but you know it is. It does serve a purpose
in the world, so it's out there. It's pretty much worldwide,
I believe, and on socials. I'm Hacienda Films, so at
Hacienda Films on Instagram and I'm on Blue Sky. Now
(01:01:44):
I got off the Twitter as as my country dives
into a flaming tar pit, I did. I figured that
was the least thing I can do, so I got
off Twitter. And the film Two Step, if you're curious
about it, is available for rent on iTunes and Amazon
(01:02:05):
and Amazon. It's on Amazon Prime so you can just
watch it for free if you have that and Google Play.
So it's out there.
Speaker 1 (01:02:16):
Yeah, amazing.
Speaker 2 (01:02:18):
So with that in mind, everybody please go ahead and
follow him wherever you may pick up the book. We'll
leave a link in that in the description. No, yes,
link in the description for that, and you know, have
a great weekend everybody, and look after yourselves and we'll
see you all very soon. So from us, thank you
very much Alex for coming on the show. You've been
a great guest with a brilliant story, first class professional,
(01:02:42):
who's got a lot more Kevin I believe in, including
who is going to make an achieve his deadline very
very shortly.
Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
Yeah, thank you for me.
Speaker 5 (01:02:51):
Thank you appreciate it, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:02:54):
You're very welcome. Anything for me, Chris, No.
Speaker 4 (01:02:57):
Just again, you know please.
Speaker 3 (01:02:59):
Obviously people have already said in the chat about picking
up Alex's book, So yeah, go and support the authors
that support the show, and come on and give us
great advice like Alex has done tonight.
Speaker 4 (01:03:09):
And yeah, maybe enjoy a movie nights Friday.
Speaker 3 (01:03:11):
Go over to Amazon and montitusee or go and order it,
and yeah, get some popcorn out and enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (01:03:17):
Sounds good to me. Thank you, everybody, see you soon. Bye.
Speaker 5 (01:03:21):
Thank you,
Welcome to the Writing Community Chat Show. My name is Chris.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I'm here with my co host Chris, so makes it
easier if I go by CJ.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
How's your week being? How are you doing? Hello, Chris,
how are you doing?
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Yeah, I'm really good. It has been a productive week.
We've come up with some really good ideas that I'm
excited about. So yeah, what's not to be excited about.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Absolutely, And we've got another fantastic guest for you tonight.
So someone who's worked in screen and is now working
on in novel. So this is fantastic. So working on
has completed their novel. But yes, we've got a good
guest coming up, so stick around, ask you questions. And yeah,
we've had some big news this week, Chris. We've actually,
after five years of grafting on this show, turned it
(00:52):
into a business. We are now the Writing Community Chat
Show CIC, which is a community interest company, which means
it's like a nonprofit social enterprise where we try and
create courses and online content for a lot of writers
and authors and use that to grow the business and
then also try and give back to the community even
(01:12):
more and the more cool quirky ideas we can come
up with and the more expansive we can make the business,
the better. But it's all going back around the community
and hopefully we can just start making some brilliant things
for the community beyond the show.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
So that's great using this meek Chris.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Yeah, and that's been the motivation for my reading. So
I've got.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
What they don't teach you at Harvard Business School, that's
been one of them.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
I've got the.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Art of winning, which again is not about winning. I'm losing,
but we've gotten out at it properly. And then black
box thinking as well, So I've got my sort of
business hat on. I've got my inspiration in terms of
books and yeah, excited, excited to bring people new opportunities
and you know, really get it to where it needs
(02:03):
to be the right and community chat show and all
the things we've talked about behind the scenes that we've
not even discussed yet.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
Again, it's really exciting.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
It's taking that control and that power back into our
own hands doing what we're passionate about, making sure that
we're getting out there and supporting people in the way
that we have been doing with these shows and these interviews,
and yeah, it's exciting.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Certainly.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Is so with those books you read this week, Chris,
or the ones that you've just shown us, is there
one take away from any of those you can share
with us today that people might find interesting.
Speaker 5 (02:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
So a lot of these books always talk about your purpose, okay,
and obviously we've got quite we're quite clear on what
our purpose is in terms of helping others. Sharing your
success is one element of it. And again that's something
that we've been doing, sharing the success of authors, obviously,
like tonight's guest, as well, sharing how they've done it,
(02:58):
how they've got there, how they can inspire others. So yeah,
there's loads of really good tips and advice. Creating impressions. Obviously,
that's something that we've been doing. So I'll just read
through some of these chapters, not ther whole chapters, and obviously,
but one of them is on creating impressions. The other
one is taking the edge. So again, if you're stepping
(03:19):
out there, what you should do and getting ahead is
one of them. Timing and again, is the timing right
right now to help people and inspire people?
Speaker 4 (03:31):
Yeah, I think it is.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
And I think with all the things we've done on
this show in terms of the online platform.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
And the interviews.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
You know, if we can take that to people and
make it more personal and be sort of in a
space where people can come, they can chat to us,
the community can grow together in an organic way, then
I think it's going to be really fun and exciting
for everyone to be involved in.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Certainly is and I think the one thing that both
were both fully aware of as self published authors ourselves
how isolating it is on that journey and how much
the community has helped us that's why the show exists,
but also bringing people along and trying to get that
community to grow in their sense that they've not only
got the extra support they need, but also the other
(04:16):
people around him on the same journey, like minded people
that can bounce off each other and assist people, and
growing as well because we're all in this together. Everything's
changing all the time with publishing and AI is coming
into the game now as well, so how we deal
with that. So there's a lot of things that we're
going to be working on.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
We'll be releasing a lot.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Of those behind the scenes thoughts that me and Chris
have gone through on our sub stack soon. And yeah,
it looks like the future is snowballing, i'd say, in
terms of things that are going on. And soon we'll
have a little sponsorship announcement just finalizing that as well
from quite a well known book related company. So yeah,
(04:55):
things are happening and we're looking forward to the future
of this now business. So yeah, exciting.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
One of the things that a lot of books always
say is you become the five people that you spend
the most time with.
Speaker 4 (05:10):
And for me, like, I can't see.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
These people physically in person, but I can read about them,
get to know what they're all about, and then hope.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
To absorb some of that knowledge. And it's the same
with the shows.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
If if you've got a writer that you really admired,
the chances are we've probably already interviewed them. So again,
go back through the shows, have a little look, pick
maybe the five authors that you're mostly inspired by, and
listen to what they've said, right, Because one of the
things about the show and what makes it great is
we get to the nitty gritty elements of it and
we go, well, how do you do that?
Speaker 4 (05:43):
What have you done to do that? What advice could
you give to somebody else?
Speaker 3 (05:47):
And if you're absorbing that in and taking it on yourself.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
The chances are you're going to have some element of.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Success with your own writing as well, and that's obviously
what we've been trying to do for the past five years.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Absolutely, and with that impression of story. With that in mind,
let me introduce Tonight's guest and we're gonna get stuck
in his story. And it's a fascinating one. So let's
get into that now. So Tonight's Guest is a storyteller
thrown through, whether it's through the lens of a camera
or the pages of a gritty Noah novel. He first
made waves in the film industry with Two Step, a
(06:22):
dark and gripping thriller that premiered at SXSW and went
on to earn critical acclaim, including being named New York
Times Critics Pick and holding a perfect score in Rotten
Tomatoes Rotten Not Rotting. Since then, screenplays from major studios
like Paramount and Sony, including an adaptation of Ernest Tidyman's
Big Bucks, and his Blacklist selected script Northeast Kingdom. But
(06:46):
now he's turned his razor sharp eye to fiction, his
debut novel Brooklyn Motto Showcase above. Chris as Always is
a love letters the late nineties New York, equal parts mystery,
social commentary, and character study. It's being described it was witty, brooding, stylish,
and deeply human. So everybody, please, welcome to the show. Filmmaker, screenwriter,
(07:07):
and now novelist Alex Johnson.
Speaker 5 (07:10):
Hello Alex, Hello Jane, Chris, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Oh, you're very very welcome. Thank you so much for
joining us. How are you doing. How's your week been?
Speaker 5 (07:19):
It's been good. I've been I've been under the gun
with the deadline for the day job, for this the
film stuff, so I've been a little. Uh, I've been
a little stressed. I'm trying to submit something end of
day l a time today, so we'll see I can,
(07:40):
if I can, if I can meet that deadline that
I've self imposed.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
So we've we've interrupted your deadline.
Speaker 5 (07:47):
It's so it's good, you know, it's that you know,
any writing, you know, if you're locked in it and
you don't take you don't walk away from it, you
don't see it with clear eyes. So I'm indebted to
you for giving me the clear eyes for seeing all
the crap that I wrote. When I go back to
in an hour.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Yeah, absolutely, so how many deadlines?
Speaker 2 (08:07):
You know, most people might find difficulties with motivation to
get things done in their own time. But does a
deadline help you get to that sort of end line
or does it kind of put pressure on you in
a different kind of way.
Speaker 5 (08:22):
It's I think it helps. The problem is that I
have generally had my epiphanies about two weeks before the deadline,
you know what I mean. So I'm sort of fiddling
about for a while and then uh, and then I
realized it and I'm like, oh crap, and I need
to squeeze a few more weeks out of what's left
in time. But yeah, I mean I think they're necessary.
(08:45):
I mean William Goldman, the famous screenwriter, used to always
say how do you when people ask him, how do
you know when the script's ready? And he would say,
if you're writing it for your if you're writing it
nobody paid you to write it, it's any when it's ready.
If somebody paid you to write it, it's ready when
it's due. Yeah, you know, So it's I mean, you
(09:09):
try to put put everything into it, but but yeah,
it's a little stressful.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
So what we like to do on the show is
definitely rewind the tape a little bit, find a bit
more about you, and that kind of have that whole
journey started. So, first of all, where in the world
are you right now?
Speaker 5 (09:25):
I'm in in Brooklyn. In Brooklyn, New York. My family
is from New York originally, but we moved about a lot.
My father was an FBI agent, and so it's sort
of like being an army brat. You you move every
two to three years about so, but we always kept
(09:47):
coming back. We kind of hovered between New York and DC.
That was kind of the main areas that I that
I grew up in. And then I I thought I
wanted to like teach film theory. I loved arguing about
genre and all that stuff. I loved having, you know,
imagining myself in tweed and a pipe hing, you know, brasson.
(10:07):
But I made the mistake of working on a film
set and I just fell in love with being on
a film set and that sort of started a path
in film, mostly starting with documentary. And that's only because
my first gig, the first person to really hire me
was was Maisles Films, which is a famous documentary company
(10:28):
out of New York. They did give me shelter salesman.
They're kind of got the grandfathers of the verite movement,
and so I kind of came up at that company
and then went off and before I knew what I
was producing, but I was always writing, you know, always,
always always writing that. I always looked at that as
(10:49):
sort of a the film work as the day job,
and what I really wanted to do was was was right. So,
you know, submitted to festivals, you know, because in the
film industry, no nobody wants to be the first person
to say you're good. That's a little too risky. So
if you get your screenplay into a festival or a
(11:12):
lab or something like that, you can use that to
get a little bit of attention. So somebody starts listening
to you. They said I was good, you should pay
attention to me. So that started to happen, but I
still couldn't really break through at that point. My family
and I we moved to Austin, Texas for about ten years,
(11:32):
and when I was in Austin, I kind of stopped producing.
I was like, I have to just stop producing. I
need to do my own work. And I think within
two years, maybe three years after we got there we
were shooting two Step, So you know, Austin had that.
(11:53):
It's a much different town now, but ten years ago
still had a lot of its old school, keep Austin
weird vibes. And it also had the whole kind of
diy like you want to make a movie, let's make
a movie vibes, and that that helped tremendously, and that
launched my professional career. The film did everything I always say,
(12:16):
it did everything he was supposed to do. It critically great,
wonderfully received, everybody got good raves, and it also pretty
much bankrupt us. So but it did start my professional
career representation, and then I started working in Hollywood in
the studio world, and that was really like air brakes,
(12:38):
you know, just the tinne of difference between being independent
and then suddenly being at the studio world. And my
first big script I had sold to Paramount and Michael
Bay's company was supposed to produce it, and I remember
calling the producer and just being like, you know, so
what can I do? What can I do today to
help get this mate? You know, on the India left, well,
(13:00):
you're always thinking, what's what's happening today? Where I can
inch just a little closer to production, you know, what
can I do? And he the producer, just was shocked
and just said, like, you don't do anything, you know,
you just you stop calling me and I'll try to,
you know, get this going, but you know, you can't
do anything. And that that was a wake up call
(13:23):
to me. And then gradually I realized that you can
have a career in the studio system as a writer
and not have any movies get made. You know, they
there used to be about six studios. Now there's like
two and a half. I don't know. They're all under
the same parent company practically, but they used to make
(13:45):
about ten movies a year each. Now they make about
three to six movies a year each, and so they'll
buy hundreds of screenplays each year. And it's really you know,
in a company like Warner Brothers, my have like, well,
then we've got we're gonna have one Batman of their
six they might be, but one's gonna be a Batman,
(14:06):
one's gonna be a Chris Nolan film, one's going to
be a clinice Wood film. And then they have like
two slots left or three slots left. So it's very
it's very excuse me. It's very hard to get things made.
But what happened is you're writing these scripts, you're creating
these worlds, you're developing these characters that you fall in
love with, and then you sell it and you get
money and you you're earning a living, but it never
(14:28):
gets made and you lose the world. Yeah, no, it's
not yours anymore, at least in the United States, and
the United States we in the Union, we we we
give up our copyright in a in exchange for benefits
that the Union gives us. That was a deal we
made in the sixties. That's how we got healthcare and
things like that. So we don't have we don't own
(14:50):
copyright the studio or the producers on it. So it
just became you know, I don't want to like cry
too much. I'm not you know, I'm not digging ditches.
I am writing screenplays, I'm meeting with people, and it's
it's it's it is creative and it is satisfying on
a certain level. But we do this to actually have
people read our work or enjoy our stories, right to
(15:12):
tell stories to people. And that's when I was I
was like, well, I'm gonna I think I'm gonna write
a book. I think the next thing I'm going to
do is a book. And I I started it during
COVID and we were still in Austin, and I just
was missing New York so desperately. I didn't we didn't
(15:35):
have any family in Texas, and I was kind of
ready to leave anyways, ready to have I would love
to I wanted we were either going to move to
l A or we were going to go back to
New York. And I just I was missing New York
so much, and and I just kind of went back
to it in the book. And so I was just
in there every day in my head and also going
(16:00):
back to a time when I was, you know, young
and immortal at nineteen ninety eight. Yeah, it was, it was.
It was a real enjoyable experience, but but totally daunting.
You know, like screenwriting is fast, I mean lightning fast
compared to you know, people go at their different paces.
(16:21):
But uh, you know, writing a book, you know is
you know, is a slog and it took some getting
used to that.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Yeah, I'm going to ask.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Obviously, writing screenplays is a lot more direct and to
the point, whereas when you're writing a novel, especially when
you've people talk about your book being atmospheric, you know,
in relation to Brooklyn. So did you really take sort
of a steep learning curve when it came to description
or that sort of thing, or were you quite was
it quite a nice transition for you or was it
(16:55):
something you have to work on?
Speaker 5 (16:56):
I think that well. I always talk about this because people,
I say, have a misconception about what screenplays are like
they used to be fairly sterile, right, they used to
be bullet points. And I always cite the example of
read the first look at the first Alien screenplay and
it's like every description is just a slugline that doesn't
(17:16):
go all the way over to the side, and it's
an information information information. Then read James Cameron's Aliens screenplay.
It's one of the most gripping, beautiful, atmospheric. You can
smell it, you can you can taste it, you can
see it. You know, it's so it's so gripping. And
(17:39):
that's really where screenwriting has kind of been in the past,
like twenty years, people have been you know, you want
people to be excited and about the work and to
want to see it come to life. You definitely need
to be more economical with words, right, you know you
have to. There is a business where people will flip
(18:01):
to the last page to see how many pages it is.
And you know, I have I have written scripts for
executives where I'm fairly certain every rewrite was described to them,
you know, where they didn't read it, you know. So
so you do need to understand that. You know, there
needs to be a lot of white on the page.
(18:23):
You know, you need to make it look unintimidating. But
the real change, the real change for me that so
so so I always was fairly descriptive. I've been described
as a I've been described as a literary screenwriter, both
as a compliment and an insult. But uh, the really
(18:44):
thing was the first person. That was totally brand new
to me and absolutely intoxicating. I just loved writing in
the first person. It was it was really it was.
It was a joy. So that was that was at first,
you know, it was it was took some getting used
to and then also understanding the It's like, oh, well,
(19:09):
if I'm the first person, then we can only see
what this person sees. Yeah, and it's suddenly you realize, oh,
it has limitations, but that was really the biggest change
for me that I that that was also just a
complete joy, you know, to do.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
So Alex, how you managed to navigate that because obviously
he talks about being a producer and then going into
writing I'm guessing almost to put your career back in
your own hands. And we talked about this at the
start of the show, about putting things back into your
sort of control. So you are in a certain element
of control with the right inside of it, but then
(19:46):
how have you managed to sort of navigate the frustration
of being in control, taking back ownership of your own
sort of life in that respect, but then having to
pass it over in exchange for being able to continue
to do it, but then having that frustration when it
doesn't get made or get produced and somebody's just sitting
(20:07):
on your work and your world that you spent so
much time and effort into and then moving on to
the next one. So could you just enlighten us to
sort of how you personally navigated that experience.
Speaker 5 (20:20):
Probably poorly at first, you know, since then I've I
understand that it is it is the business, you know,
it is it is the reality of working in the business.
And you know, it was it was, it was I
love that you have this community because you know, when
I was, right when I was my screenwriting career began,
(20:42):
we were living in Austin, and and I'm I'm and
I am because my sale, my sale was kind of
a big sale at the beginning, and I went, I
got put right in the union. Like I had enough
credits to go right in the Union. So I went
in the I was in the w g A and so,
but there really weren't any other right people in the
Writers' Guild in Austin. There were a few, but now many,
and so I never really felt part of a community.
(21:04):
And then when I came to New York. When I
came back to New York about three years ago, we
moved back, and I, you know, I called up my
my my union rep in the West Coast because we were,
you know, we're on the verge of a strike, and
I wanted to be able to doce things in New
York even though I was a West Coast Guild member.
(21:26):
And he was like, well, just join the join the
new join the East Coast Guild, you know, like, just
just do it. So I so I joined the East
Coast Guild. I transferred to East Coast Guild, and suddenly
I was, you know, in a community of writers, which
I had never really experienced. And the strike happened shortly thereafter,
and so I'm walking the picket lines and you know,
(21:46):
we're all we're all chatting for the first time in
a long time, and you just realize how consistent the
story is of the frustrations, and you know, and it's
just it's it. You know, you're still frustrated, but you're
part of a community of frustrations. So it makes it
a little less, a little, a little less, a little
(22:07):
you know, it hurts a little less maybe, So that
certainly helped me. And that was also and also at
the time, I mean at the time, I was with
a pretty big book agent in New York and I mean,
I'm not going to name the person. And it was
a very frustrating experience. I had heard just how big
(22:33):
this person was and what he could do, and then
a I could never get him on the phone, which
has never been my experience with my film agents. They've
always been you know, I mean, it'll call me back
if they can't take my call, you know, or they'll
text me or something. But this guy I couldn't even
connect with. And it got very frustrating. And you know,
(22:56):
we were sending it out and I didn't understand why,
how he was the process of how he was sending
it out, and you know, he would send it to
like three three companies and then he said he would
give them four months and then he would send it
to some more and it just and it was just like,
you know, I'm going to be dead, you know, by
the time this thing ever gets published. And and I
(23:16):
was walking on the you know, and I was walking
with with a lot of other writers and then started
talking to a few that self published, and and I
was like, you know, I just I hate And it
was just that feeling again of being out of control,
like just let this person do their job. And I
was like, I don't know if they like their job,
or if they know their job, or you know, they're
(23:38):
they're successful, but I don't know if it's because of
how well they do their job. I think they're just
you know, it's just the world. So I took the
book back after about a year and a half and
started just doing you know, a lot of research. I personally,
I did send it out to a bunch of indie
(24:00):
super indie small presses, which I had asked my agent
to do at the time, and he said he wouldn't
because he doesn't make any money that way. So that's
that was right about when we kind of parted ways.
So I sent it to a bunch of presses that
that were okay with no having no representation but or no,
(24:20):
you know, they didn't. I didn't have someone else sending
it for me, you know, And I was offered a
couple of publishing deals that just my experience in the
independent film world, it sounded a whole lot of you know,
where people would offer me distribution deals and they'd say like, oh,
and then you know, and then Mike, here's our marketing team.
(24:42):
And I was like, I thought Mike answered the phones. Well,
Mike answers the phone, then he does marketing. And I
was like, do you mean like Facebook or do you
mean marketing? And he's like, wow, Facebook and Twitter, and
you know, it's like, so, but what about like marketing?
You know? And then well if you want some mart
and they if you want that, you know, you're welcome
(25:03):
to go out and hire someone to do it. And
it just became clear that it was going to be
that similar situation and I would still end up probably
paying somebody to do some publicity, and I just thought, well,
why not just do this, uh where I'm in control
of every process, or at least I'm I'm, I'm, i'm
(25:27):
you know, I'm supervising people that I trust, between the
copy or the incredible artists that did our cover and
the graphic on the inside, you know, and just and
and and everyone I spoke to on the guild on
the on the lines that self published was like, just
don't rush it. You know, your instinct once you've waited
(25:49):
for two years because of your agent or whatever, and
now you're like, I'm going to self publish, and people
rush it, and they shouldn't run. You know, You've got
to treat it. Maybe not a year out, but give
it six months, you know something, so you can plan
and try to do some publicity and and all that stuff.
So so that's that, that's what I decided to do.
(26:10):
And you know, I'm glad. It's certainly it's certainly an uphill,
it's certainly, but I'm glad I did it that way,
and the book exists as it exists, and and you know,
and I was a part of every piece of it,
so you know, I'm proud of it. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
So what advice went you give to people?
Speaker 3 (26:34):
And Alex in terms of like you talked about getting
that good attention and when you went off and obviously
produced your own film and it got so much critical
of praise and.
Speaker 4 (26:45):
You know, everyone was praising it in the right way.
Viewers loved it and and critics loved it as well.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
How much of a temptation is it then for you
to be creating that good attention for yourself? And how
do you actually do them?
Speaker 5 (27:03):
You know, I think I think unfortunately you realize how
you should have done it after long after you should
have done it. You know. Generally, you know, my main
advice with anyone I do a lot of mentoring at
the Guild with with you know, I'm not going to
say younger screenwriters, new screenwriters, because a lot of people
join the Guild you know in their forties and fifties
and sixties. Is always have, at least in the film aspect.
(27:28):
You always have to have more than one project, you know.
You just it is so hard to get anything made,
It's so hard to sell anything, and it's so hard
to get anything made. You need to have multiple things
that you're trying to do at the same time. And
then when something goes, you go with it. You know,
you you ride, you ride the current with it because
there's so much working against it and working against being
(27:53):
a success in film that you you already have, you know,
the kind of like level of difficulties already so high
if you have any momentum to go with it, you know.
With the book, uh, I probably my my lesson to
(28:13):
myself is probably even though I gave myself six months
out when I decided to start this process, I probably
would have I probably should have done a year, you know,
to do it, to really do it properly. It's so
hard though, it's so hard. You're so desperate for it
to be out, and you know, and you think six
months and I'm like, I don't know if I can
survive six months, like with it not out yet. I've
(28:36):
waited years, you know, And but it's it's it's certainly
worth it to take your time with it and just
you know, take a deep breath and and and understand
that you know, it's it's it's for the it's good,
good but then I will say I've I have a
lot of friends. When I started in New York, I
(28:58):
was doing some music stuff as well, and I have
a lot of friends that are still in the music business.
And I feel like the only ones that are still
in the music business are doing publicity that are my age.
And I was speaking to one recently and he does
pr for Billy Bragg here in the States, and he
said he tells all independent artists nowadays, you can't think
(29:21):
of it as a release day or week or month.
It's a release year. You know, just there's it's it's
a hustle and it's so hard to get attention, and
you just got to try and just keep sending out
those query letters, you know, trying to get on the podcasts,
(29:41):
trying to get on trying to be interviewed, trying to
get the book out there, like give it a year,
like don't don't don't don't crack if when it comes out,
it doesn't you know, sell a thousand to ten thousand
copies on the first day or something like that. You know,
like just know that it takes time, especially when you're
working from an indi pendent level. You just have so
(30:02):
much against you.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
You know.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Yeah, there's been a few occasions where we've had people
on the show that have been really sort of informative,
and the way they approach their book sales is like
stripping it right down and building it as a business
and really taking that professional business approach and working on
it like your like it's your day job. And I
think a lot of indie authors perhaps don't do that.
(30:26):
I'm one myself, you know, I'm obviously busy doing other things,
but there's a lot of people that don't actually think
of it in that sense and do exactly what you
said is rush it out there and then expect things
to happen. But it's that whole after the writing process
where the real hard work begins, unfortunately for a lot
of people, and that marketing is a crucial aspect. So
I think a lot of people really need to take
(30:47):
that into account and do what you said, really look
at it more ahead of time and more after after
the release as well.
Speaker 5 (30:55):
Yeah, and also, I mean people have you know, a
lot more ability to get some exposure that they think.
I mean, you know, the whole blurb process is you know,
so absolutely devastatingly humiliating, but at the same time, you
could cold email people and if you were fans of
(31:19):
theirs and you can't know this is this is twenty
twenty five. You can figure out people's email addresses. It
might cost you nine bucks a month, but you can
from various websites, and you know, you can call it
email or you can send emails or just and you
can put you know, you put some personal connection to
their work and how they've mattered, and that it would
(31:40):
mean so much if they could, you know, read your work.
I had a few people that responded that way to
my blurbs. But then also you generally don't realize how
connected you are. Maybe it's you know, Kevin Bacon's sort
of situation where it's layers of connection, you know, but
you start asking around. I started sending emails out just
to people and say, I'm about to start the blurb
process I need. I'm looking for blankety blank or authors
(32:05):
or even anyone I was I was trying to get
like nineties icons even just because of the book was
set in the nineties. And yeah, and and know that
you the amount of requests you make should be high
because you're going to get a two to eight percent
success you know, maybe a ten percent response rate and
(32:26):
then a percentage of that are actually going to finish
the book and get the blurb done? So but also
but that that that process I would have started a
lot earlier. I did not start that process early enough.
But yeah, okay, Well.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
What's the plan for this book then?
Speaker 3 (32:47):
In terms of like you talked about, like, you know,
approaching it as a business and approaching.
Speaker 4 (32:52):
People before the blurb and before it's out and stuff.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Now that it is, are you going to follow the
same sort of technique and you know, maybe just mail
it off to people and go, you know, I've written
this and see what you think and stuff like that.
And there's your plan partly to do that and then
to keep writing. And have you got like another novel
in the work? So have you got like most green blazes?
Obviously you have because you talked about the deadline today.
(33:16):
But is that your plan moving forward then, to like
nurture this book but also keep working on others and
keep pushing them in the same sort of way.
Speaker 5 (33:26):
Yeah. I mean, I think my agents, my film agents
want me to just try to to crack out a
pilot based on the book or something like that that
they can start trying to sell, but I think the
book needs to get a moderate amount of attention first.
But but yeah, I'm still sending it out, you know,
when friends. I'm getting a lot of emails and texts
(33:47):
from people I haven't spoken to in a long time
who will be like, oh my god, head the book.
I loved it so much, you know, blah blah blah.
And I'll say like, you know, well, please spread the word.
You know, publicity is difficult. Magazines don't exist anymore. You know,
it's hard to try to get you know, some exposure.
And invariably they say, oh, yes, I've been lending it
out to friends, you know, on to be like, well,
(34:12):
first of all, make them buy it. Yeah, that's fine,
But that's the process, right. It needs to get out there.
It needs to kind of like you know, spiderweb out
there and and and it'll and then it hits. It'll
randomly hit someone. I was tagged in a LinkedIn post
of someone I do not know who has fifty thousand followers,
(34:35):
and he posted the book with like a six hundred
word you know, critique or love, you know, how much
he loved it because he was in New York in
the nineties and all this stuff, and I was like,
I don't know how that happened, but it was one
of those spider webs, probably one of those free those
those lent out copies. But but yeah, so I'm doing that,
(34:58):
you know, continuing with uh press, trying to get people
actors I've worked with, to take pictures of themselves on
the Euphoria set reading it. I'm looking at you, James
Landry Abert, uh, you know, and uh, let's see see
what's what. But you know, I it's just so you know,
(35:22):
I've done writing so so long in film and not
really having these this thing exists, you know, exists beyond
like two step or projects that haven't you know, materialized yet.
It is. I don't want to overstate how rewarding it
is to have a book, but it's it's just been
tremendous to just have it, you know, just just just
to just to know it exists on paper that will
(35:49):
you know, not last thirty five years probably, but still
but you know, it's it's, it's it's and it's such
a personal book too, so that I don't know, it's
it's been a it's been a rewarding experience. I still
obsess over sales.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
But with with it, first of all being a personal
book and the fact it related back to your youth
in the location that you're you know so well, and
having the process where your screenplay is often went out
to certain people and they kind of put it maybe
on a shelf in a you know kind of way,
and having this self published book when you released that,
(36:27):
was there a big difference in kind of the feeling
you had or the nerves perhaps releasing the book compaied
to screenplay because you knew people were going to read
it and give your feedback quite instantly, compared to the
screenplay which sort of feedback.
Speaker 5 (36:40):
Yeah. The I mean, I think, you know, with any writer,
once you hit send, you're just filled with dread. Yeah
about even just about the grammar and the email. But
uh yeah, I mean it did. And when the blurbs
would come in, you know, I started to like pause
(37:02):
my imposter syndrome for like five minutes, and then I would,
you know, and then and then I would have it again,
and then another great blurb will come in. So I think,
you know, once it got out there and the every
everyone's been pretty positive about it. I uh, I'm not
(37:22):
as I'm not as nervous about it. If you don't
like it, you don't like it, you know, it's I
don't I don't know what to do about that. But
I mean, actually, you know, the screenwriting stuff people write,
people read it faster than they do the books. You
know that they at least in the when you're a professional,
like when you're doing something for hire or for you know,
it's kind of terrifying. They'll they'll send you a yes
(37:46):
or a no pretty quickly. But but the but but
it's been it's been positive, you know. I I think
I skipped over another part of your question about business,
just in terms of what I'm doing in terms of writing.
Just to go back again, I forgot to say, yeah,
I'm I'm writing. I have another book. I have another
(38:06):
I have you know, I have this character I'd like
to continue, you know. I mean, part of this is
satisfying my urge to have a my own detective character,
you know, which I think everybody wants to have their Colombo,
you know, you know, uh so, so I do have.
I do have a series of the next book is
(38:27):
pretty laid out. I haven't started writing it yet, but
I have my spillage notes of what I want to do.
So so I'm gonna I'm gonna get started on that
pretty soon. I need to. I need to get a
sale with my day job. I need to I need
to get I need to make a little money for
my agents and myself, and then I'll have the time
to to to put back into the into the h
(38:50):
into the book. But yeah, I do want to continue
with that, brilliant.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Okay, So we've been chatting for a good forty minutes
about about your journey so far, and we have heard
about the book yet. So yeah, so could you tell
us all everybody what the book is all about and
then we'll get some questions based on that.
Speaker 5 (39:11):
So and start off in general terms, it's a it's
a it's a take on first person noir kind of that, uh,
you know, detective fiction. But it's also about being at
that point in your life where, you know, late twenties
where you kind of have to start making decisions and
(39:32):
start being more active and less passive and and stop
letting life happen to you. But you have to go
out and and and and and and engage with life.
But so, the protagonist is Nico Kelly, who is a
private investigator, but he sort of doesn't see himself as that.
He takes pictures for a for the city. Whenever anybody,
(39:55):
a city employee, has an insurance claim, he kind of
just follows them for a little bit and takes some
pictures in case they can prove that the insurance claim
was false. And you know, he thinks he's kind of
a snitch, and he doesn't really like his job, and
he's kind of feeling a little lost, and he ends
up following a police officer one day and he is
(40:19):
videotaping when two other undercover police officers show up at
the police officer's house and kill him, and he can see,
you know, through a slit in the window, he can
see just the muzzle flashes, but he doesn't he doesn't
see the definitive information. But he then takes it to
his boss, who he thinks is going to help him out,
(40:41):
but his boss ends up having other ideas of possibly
blackmailing the cops to get some money out of them,
and then everything just sort of starts unraveling and bodies
start piling up. But in the interim, he's also twenty
eight years old and hooking up and you know, you know,
(41:02):
going to pubs and playing pinball and and and and
judging those around him, which is the joy of first person.
But it's also an exploration in some ways of my
own kind of genetic makeup. I'm half Ecuadorian and half
Irish American, and my in my writing, I've always kind
(41:26):
of avoided that. For some reason, I don't know, I
felt like, oh, you can't write about your I can't
just make somebody me that's I don't know why I'd
laid that on myself, like I thought it was like,
but I didn't for years. And then I heard an
interview with Gary Steinart where the interviewer was basically like,
I can't help but notice your protagonist in your new
book is a Russian writer who lives in New York.
(41:47):
And he kind of pushed back really aggressively, and it
was just like, why the hell can I just make
it's my book? It's my life. It's that's what I
want to write about. And you know, and as I
get older and as people parents and grandparents aren't around
anymore to ask questions about who I am, you know,
(42:09):
I kind of feel like the book was an exploration
of me asking those questions in some ways, so simply yeah,
so something yeah, with a bit more murder. Yeah, you
gotta make it fun, you know. It's it's uh, it's
you know, there's a growing up you're you're being Ecuadorian
and being Irish American. You're generally too white for the
(42:31):
Ecuadorian side and you're too brown for the Irish American side,
but then nobody thinks you're Ecuadorian. So you also witness
incredible racism. You know, the things people have said to
me thinking I was, you know, just a white kid,
and I will say like, hey, I'm actually Latin American.
(42:53):
I find that very offensive and they're just like, well
you are, but you're not really. You don't look at
and you're not you don't act it. So anyways, I
kind of wanted to investigate that in some ways as well.
And all set in nineteen ninety eight Beyonny Time, New York.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
So it was nineteen ninety eight always the choice, because
it was something you could sort of it was familiar
in your mind, or was there the other different sort
of timescale you attempted with.
Speaker 5 (43:21):
It was I wanted it to be Giuliani Eira definitely,
and I didn't want to get too close to nine
to eleven. And I, uh, it's spread on the edge
of what I can still remember basically, But it is
like for me being at the time twenty seven twenty eight,
(43:41):
it is that, you know, it is that moment in
time I wanted the protagonist to be. So I just
felt like, what just said it? Then? And then I
found I have this little you know, an old pape,
you know, an old book diary. It wasn't a diary,
but it was. It was a date book, right, And
because I used to do freelance film foruction and i'd
have to fill on a hole, I'd have to put
(44:02):
the dates down as pre you know, I coal, you know,
and BlackBerry and all that stuff. And so I found
my book from nineteen ninety eight, and I still added
the bottom of the box, and I pulled it out
and flipped through and reading about, you know, seeing like
dates and movies and friends' names and band names and
(44:24):
you know, and and meet at this pub that doesn't
exist anymore, and it just kind of all sent me
back a little bit. And then just to help flesh
it out, I got, you know, I picked a date,
and I picked a literal week. I wanted it to happen,
and then I ordered The Village Voice from that week.
And the Village Voice was the big independent weekly in
(44:45):
New York City at the time, so it was where
you'd have all the band listings and art listings and
films and everything. And when you lived, you know, that
was like your Bible. You always had one on you
because you always needed to know what was happening. So
I sort of flipped through those, just the ads, and
it just kind of sent it all back in a
in a clear, clear way.
Speaker 4 (45:06):
Amazing. Yeah, I was just going to say, having like the.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Desire to have a series of detection detective novels, have
you got a time frame in mind for those as well?
Is it going to be something that you're going to
carry on for quite a few books? Like obviously we
know a lot of people who've had quite a lot
of success with that type of format, having a detective
and following them through a period of history. Is that
something that's crossed your mind and that you've thought about
(45:35):
doing in the future.
Speaker 5 (45:37):
Yeah, No, that's that's that's the plan. So the next
novel will be will still be twentieth century, that'll be
ninety nine, and then I don't want to deal with them.
I want there's this fascinating period in New York. I
was in New York for nine to eleven, and there
(45:58):
was this really strange I mean, the whole period was
upsetting and strange, but there was a really weird period
where when you started getting used to no planes flying
over except jets, you know, and military people with automatic
(46:19):
weapons walking up and down the Brooklyn Bridge, and it
was just like quiet, and it was a very strange
time where the whole city seemed to be in coming
out of a coma, you know in some ways, and
not sure what to do or you know. It was
a very it was a very interesting time. So I
(46:39):
don't want to deal with the immediate aftermath of nine
to eleven, but that period there I find very fascinating.
So that's where I would do the third one. It
would be about it would be two thousand, mid two
thousand and one, probably maybe a little after that, but yeah,
and then after that, I'm not sure. Maybe the antagonist
(47:00):
will just mirror my life and go down to Texas
at some point. Who knows.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
Yeah, not so.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
Anya said that the book sounds really interesting. She's going
to get it and was in college in nineteen ninety
eight and remembers that year.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
Well, so, I said, was that in New York?
Speaker 2 (47:17):
She said, no, Miami, But I lived in Connecticut until
ninety seven and took the train to New York with
friends in ninety five ninety seven.
Speaker 5 (47:23):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
Yeah, So obviously that sort of local knowledge of history
of being in that area. Will people really resonate with
the kind of detail of the city in your book,
because someone described it as very as in New York
being a character itself in your novel.
Speaker 5 (47:40):
Yeah, I mean, I think it was important to get that,
and that's probably why I couldn't go much beyond earlier
than ninety eight because of my my aging brain. But
but yeah, it's definitely I wanted you to feel it.
And and that's you know, without tooting my own home.
And that's a lot of people have come up to
(48:02):
me and just been like, how the hell did you
remember that? But I think sometimes people do that where
they're not when they're not writers, you know, and they
don't realize that like we're basically banking stuff for further
use for our entire lives, you know, or just we're
we're in the moment, but we're also thinking how we
can use this moment maybe later at home in front
(48:24):
of our computer. So I've always if things have stuck
with me that I I mean, I can there are
certain images in the book I can remember when I thought, oh,
I should use this like and I'm talking about things
I remember that I thought in ninety nine. I mean,
I was much better about note notebooks back then. I
used to walk through the notebook and you know, I
(48:45):
pretend that I'm doing it on my phone now, but
it's not the same as when I used to walk
around with a notebook and just scribble things down constantly. Yeah.
What's the main.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
Difference on that you've noticed between script writing and writing
a novel.
Speaker 4 (48:58):
What's the sort of day today been like comparing the two.
Speaker 5 (49:04):
You know, I like to I like to get my
head in if I whenever I'm approaching in a screenplay situation,
I like to read everything if I if you know,
I'm mentioning forward in a script, I like to start
my day from page one, reading and going into it
and then try to write the momentum. So I'm consistently
(49:27):
and uh in tone and and going with the flow.
But obviously with the book, I couldnt start the book
from the beginning. Every day it was you know, it
was like is that is that kind of like inching
going back a little bit and then so kind of
figuring that rhythm out where I felt like I was,
(49:48):
you know, I was in the voice of the character consistently,
so I can move forward. But also, just like I've
said up before, but it's it's when you're you know, right,
scripts is a much faster process, and you know, you
really do get intimidated by that word count. You know,
it's just like and then before you know, but then
(50:09):
but then it's like, you know, I would always set
a goal for myself that was pretty low, you know,
just so I could reach it and just be like, Okay,
I did it. But I think part of my never
having done it before, my big fear was not finishing it,
not not having the legs to finish it. And you know,
(50:30):
maybe I'm going to make a go. I've never written
run a marathon, and I never will. I had. You know,
one of the production companies I used to produce at
there was a you know, just the accountant there ran
marathons like eighty year, like just travel the country and
ran marathon, and I asked her how she trains, and
(50:53):
she was like, I don't. I don't. I don't need
to train, you know, Like I mean, She's like, I'll
run like a couple of miles else a day. But
she's like, but I know I know the marathon now,
like I know how to get through it. I know
how I'm gonna feel at this stage. At this stage,
I know if I push myself too hard here, I'm
not going to make it to hear and I and
(51:14):
I feel like writing the book is sort of like that.
When I approach the next book, I'm not going to
be as filled with terror at the word count. You know,
I'm gonna I kind of know. I know the feeling,
you know, the muscle memory of it will help. You know.
I'm not saying it's going to be a thousand times easier,
but I think it's kind of like that, like you're
(51:34):
kind of now that I did it, I know I
can do it and I will do it again, you know, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (51:42):
All right, Chris, we need to start on our staple
questions and then guys that are watching, if you've got
questions for Alex, now was the time to pop him
in the chat and we'll ask them. But first of all, Chris,
do you want to start us off? And we'll get
through it.
Speaker 4 (51:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (51:56):
So one of our staple questions that we have is
if you could take any character from fiction and made
that character your own.
Speaker 5 (52:03):
Which character, and why, gosh it might be Uh, it
might have to be Colombo just because much I mean,
it's not really fiction, I could. I mean, I know
I've read novelizations.
Speaker 6 (52:21):
I'm that much of a of a of a a
Colombo addict. But uh, I'll stick to I'll stick to Uh,
I'll stick to fiction.
Speaker 5 (52:35):
Yeah. I I love Elmer Leonard and I feel like
Gold Coast has had such an influence on all my work.
I mean, I can argue that a good chunk of
Elmore Leonards it's sort of in the same vibe as
Gold Coast, but I forget the protagonist name in that.
(52:57):
But but it's just had it just has ripple effects
in everything. I mean, the thing I wrote today, definitely
the thing I'm working on right now. You know that
involves involves the Dixie Mafia, and it feels Elmer Leonard
influenced throughout it. That would probably be that nice.
Speaker 1 (53:21):
A lot.
Speaker 4 (53:21):
Sorry, A lot of people.
Speaker 3 (53:24):
Talk about him as being such an inspirational figure in
both screenwriting and novels.
Speaker 4 (53:31):
So like, why do you think that is?
Speaker 3 (53:32):
From your like professional viewpoint now having been through that process?
Speaker 4 (53:37):
What makes alm More Lenard so special in that regard?
Speaker 5 (53:40):
You know? I again, like something that my agents will
say about uh, any agent will say about their client
is they'll they'll talk about a script having a real,
real Alex R. Johnson vibes, you know, and it's I
think it's a stretch for me. But when you're when
you pick up an Elmore Leonard book and you read
(54:02):
the first page and you hold it in your hands,
you're in his world, and you know, you talk about
a marvel like multi verse, like you just believe that
this world exists, of all his characters, you know, you
know through time. It's just such a clear voice. It's
so clean, And I mean that in terms of like
(54:24):
it's it. He doesn't try to be fancy, but at
the same time, there'll be a line of description that
will just drop you. You know. I feel the same
way about Richard Price. You know, Richard Price is his description.
His description will be limited. He won't be heavily descriptive
(54:44):
all the time. But then he'll just you know, he'll
say something and you just put the book down and
you're just like wow, you know how you know that
just blows you away.
Speaker 2 (54:54):
So yeah, okay, if you could take the ending of anything,
whether that be a TV show, a novel, or a film,
and changed the end into something, what ending would you
change your way?
Speaker 5 (55:08):
Oh? Boy? Maybe uh, maybe the ending of saying elsewhere.
I don't know if that you're too young for that.
The TV show at the Hospital, you know, I think
that they ended by a little boy staring into a
globe and the hospital was inside the globe, and they
they were alluding to the fact that the entire show
(55:30):
is the entire like eight eight seasons of the show
inside the globe and the boy's imagination. And I found it,
you know, I think most people found it a little insulting.
Speaker 1 (55:45):
Oh that's not brilliant.
Speaker 3 (55:48):
The next question you have is if it's a bit
of a morbid one, but you're on your death bed,
you're looking back at your writing career, what would you
be happy with?
Speaker 4 (55:56):
What is success to you?
Speaker 5 (55:58):
You know, I mean, i'd have to say, at this
point the book you know. I mean the book is uh,
you know, the book's about there's a dead father in
the book that's very present, not as a ghost or
anything but that, but it's very present. And so it's
a father and something. I have a son. I obviously
(56:20):
have a father. I feel like, you know, when my
son reads the book, I mean he's he's old enough
to read it, but he has not read it. When
he reads the book, he'll know me in ways that
he'll never uh that that that that you know, he
would never get just talking to me. So it's not
(56:43):
exactly it's not my life, but it's there. But I'm
in it, you know, I mean my spirit, I think,
and uh yeah, I think that's why.
Speaker 1 (56:54):
Yeah. Nice answer.
Speaker 2 (56:55):
Okay, I've got a question that's not a stable question,
but it's what I want to ask. You mentioned screenplays earlier,
Alien and Aliens, two of my favorite films in the
past or currently still.
Speaker 1 (57:06):
There's a new series coming out Alien Earth.
Speaker 5 (57:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (57:10):
I'm very skeptical of this. It looks great fun the
trailer so far. However, there's so much they could do
with Aliens on Earth. What they've shown so far is
very sort of classically Alien style.
Speaker 1 (57:25):
What are your hopes as someone who's in the.
Speaker 2 (57:27):
Screenwriting world for something such a big scale to come
out so far away from the original.
Speaker 5 (57:35):
You know, I can only trust in Noah Hawley, who's
the who's who'd created that show and who did the
Fargo adaptation? And gosh, what else has he done? I forget?
But but he's so good and he's such a great writer.
He's one of the screenwriters I recommend people read one
(57:57):
of the you know, TV screenwriters because I think he's
he's so talented. So I'm just going to trust and
I'm just gonna trust and Noah Holly. I mean, it's
any of these things. You know, you're you're always supposed to.
It's funny because when you when you're adapting things or
when you're presented with something that existed in another environment
(58:20):
or medium, they Hollywood claims to really want you to
put your take on it. They're like, you want the
Noah Holly vibe, we want the Alex R. Johnson whatever,
you know, but that it might not be what the audience.
But so we'll see. But he's so talented, you know,
I think it'll I'm hoping it'll be good.
Speaker 2 (58:42):
Yeah, Well, I saw a very very small trailer today
and it looks so far on the money.
Speaker 1 (58:47):
So let's have our fingers brusty. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (58:50):
Question for manyah, thank you very much. If you can
go on an all expensive paid writer's retreat for your
next creative work, where would it be? In other words,
what place can inspire you like no other?
Speaker 5 (59:01):
You know, when I was in Texas about a few
years in, I was ready to leave, and I just
I have wonderful friends, I love Texas, I love Austin,
but I just I'm a New Yorker and I just
never quite vied with it. About the third year, we
went to Marfa, which is West Texas, which basically imagine
(59:23):
no country for old men. It's all shot there in
that area. It's a type of place, you know, you
could walk out with a bottle of wine, lay down
in the middle of the road in the middle of
the night and just lay on your back and look
at stars, and you know no one's going to come
by except maybe a while hog or two, and it's just,
(59:45):
you know, it's the kind of place where you start
using words like magical, unronically. You know, you drop all
cynicism about what an environment can do to you. And
I think that it's that kind of uh it's like
a blank slate without being entirely blank, So you're able
(01:00:07):
to focus, but you're still able to ah, feel like
you're part of the world, but a small part, you know.
I like places that make me feel a little small
that that that just make me kind of be in
awe at the size and scope of our existence. So
(01:00:29):
I do I uh, there's a lovely place there that
that I couldn't afford to stay out long enough to
write a book, but I'd love to.
Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
Yeah, that sounds good, brilliant.
Speaker 2 (01:00:40):
Okay, So we have gone over our hour and I'm
very very conscious that you've got a deadline very much
looming over your head right now. So before we wrap
this up, where can people find out more information about yourself?
Where can they go and by Brooklyn motto and stalk
you on social media?
Speaker 5 (01:00:57):
Sure? So, uh uh, if you're in the States, we
have bookshop, I would recommend going to bookshop dot org.
That's uh that that's the online marketplace where you can
actually still support your local bookstore where they get a
cut of the sale. You just list them and they
and they get it. So or just go to your
bookstore and order it if you don't have it. If
(01:01:19):
you need to order it from Amazon, you may they no,
but you know it is. It does serve a purpose
in the world, so it's out there. It's pretty much worldwide,
I believe, and on socials. I'm Hacienda Films, so at
Hacienda Films on Instagram and I'm on Blue Sky. Now
(01:01:44):
I got off the Twitter as as my country dives
into a flaming tar pit, I did. I figured that
was the least thing I can do, so I got
off Twitter. And the film Two Step, if you're curious
about it, is available for rent on iTunes and Amazon
(01:02:05):
and Amazon. It's on Amazon Prime so you can just
watch it for free if you have that and Google Play.
So it's out there.
Speaker 1 (01:02:16):
Yeah, amazing.
Speaker 2 (01:02:18):
So with that in mind, everybody please go ahead and
follow him wherever you may pick up the book. We'll
leave a link in that in the description. No, yes,
link in the description for that, and you know, have
a great weekend everybody, and look after yourselves and we'll
see you all very soon. So from us, thank you
very much Alex for coming on the show. You've been
a great guest with a brilliant story, first class professional,
(01:02:42):
who's got a lot more Kevin I believe in, including
who is going to make an achieve his deadline very
very shortly.
Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
Yeah, thank you for me.
Speaker 5 (01:02:51):
Thank you appreciate it, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:02:54):
You're very welcome. Anything for me, Chris, No.
Speaker 4 (01:02:57):
Just again, you know please.
Speaker 3 (01:02:59):
Obviously people have already said in the chat about picking
up Alex's book, So yeah, go and support the authors
that support the show, and come on and give us
great advice like Alex has done tonight.
Speaker 4 (01:03:09):
And yeah, maybe enjoy a movie nights Friday.
Speaker 3 (01:03:11):
Go over to Amazon and montitusee or go and order it,
and yeah, get some popcorn out and enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (01:03:17):
Sounds good to me. Thank you, everybody, see you soon. Bye.
Speaker 5 (01:03:21):
Thank you,
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